


under the aspen tree

by WingedQuill



Series: the children of flowers and leaves [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Murder, Character Study, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Magic, Nature Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24945739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: When Visenna's latest child is born, she expects him to be a druid like her, like all her children before him. She expects him to be calm, and quiet, and gentle. She expects him to be receptive to her magic, her teachings. More than anything, she expects him to be obedient.Things don't quite work out that way.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Vesemir, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Visenna
Series: the children of flowers and leaves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811806
Comments: 29
Kudos: 251
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #002





	under the aspen tree

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Child abuse, neglect, and abandonment, threatened mutilation and murder (not of a child).

Behind her small wooden cottage at the edge of the tiniest town in Cintra, Visenna gives birth under the protective shadow of an aspen tree. It’s an easy labor, eased by magic and experience both, and after four hours, her youngest son is cradled in her arms. He is a tiny thing, tinier than most of her children had been, with chubby cheeks and a shock of curly red hair. She smiles down at him as he waves a little arm in the air and greets the world with a cry.

“Hush now,” she tells him as she shapes a cradle out of the tree’s bark and branches. “You are safe here.”

She sends out a pulse of her magic, warmth and home and safety, seeking to connect to the baby’s own power. 

He opens his mouth and _shrieks,_ a sharp, unpleasant sound that cracks the air and almost startles Visenna into dropping him. She catches herself just in time, but it’s like he can sense her shock, her discomfort. He starts squirming and wailing and kicking with his weak little feet.

“Hush,” she says, more firmly. _“Hush.”_

But he has no intention of hushing. Instead, he sobs until he is out of breath, until his face goes almost as red as his hair.

None of her other children had been like this. They had all felt her magic and gone quiet and peaceful at its feeling of comfort. They had welcomed her soothing and shushing, they had communicated their needs through their minds, simple impressions of milk, sleep, cleanliness. But this child’s mind is dark. Unreachable.

She doesn’t know what to do.

In the end, she places him in the cradle of bark and tells herself that he will cry himself out. She weaves a bubble of silence around the tree and goes back into the cottage, back to her potions and spells of healing.

Hours later, when she returns to the tree, the child has indeed cried himself out. His breaths are shaky and stuttering, his face wet with sweat and tears, but he does not protest when Visenna hefts him into her arms.

“There you go,” she tells him, victory sweet on her tongue. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

He is too young to feel emotions like betrayal. Or hate. But there is something gleaming in his eyes, something deep and hurt that has her considering, just for a second, whether it would be better to take him into the village and make him someone else’s problem.

But she went through all the trouble to carry and birth this child. And he must have some of her magic in his heart, no matter how deeply buried.

“We will do great things, Aspen,” she says, speaking his name for the first time. He is named, as all his siblings are named, for the first plant that he touched.

It is time to get to work.

***

Aspen is resistant to her teaching.

She thought that his fussing was over, after the first crying spell, but he seems to have an ocean’s worth of tears in him, and he’s determined to get them all out. He cries when he’s hungry, tired, dirty, bored. And worst of all, he doesn’t show her his mind, doesn’t even try to communicate. So she’s left stumbling in the dark, ordered around by this tiny force of nature. Resentment blooms thick and heavy in her chest.

Her life is falling apart. Her potions and spells are going neglected, sleep has become a bygone dream, and when she catches herself in the mirror, she can see that she looks like a wild thing, all frazzled hair and dark circles.

Calming magic swirls off her fingertips constantly, but the child is resistant to it. Either he’s consciously blocking it, or he doesn’t have enough magic to even register the spell. As the days wear on, she begins to suspect the latter. His siblings had, by now, been able to tame small animals and encourage plant growth of the plants she placed them amongst. But Aspen just squirms in the dirt.

And then one day, she comes outside to find him holding a handful of clover in his tiny fist, the roots ripped up carelessly from the ground. He looks at her and babbles proudly, holding out his act of destruction like she should delight in it.

Rage burns in her and she storms back into the house, ignoring Aspen’s shrieks of protest. She fumbles through her potions until she finds a simple sleeping draught she prescribes to insomniacs. Waters it down to what, she thinks, is the right amount, and flies back outside.

“Drink,” she snarls, shoving the bottle into his mouth. “Drink, you little beast.”

He drinks. He sleeps. She can finally rest.

It’s no crime, then, that she keeps mixing him the potion, keeps him asleep whenever she needs to focus. She’s using something that she’s sure other, magicless mothers would kill for. She isn’t doing anything wrong.

***

(Geralt will never be able to regulate his own sleep. Insomnia will follow him for the rest of his life.)

***

Aspen doesn’t get any easier when he starts to walk and talk. If anything, he gets even worse.

He has a million questions about the world, about their place in it. _Who are all those people that come to our house? Where do they live? A village, can we go there? Can we see it? I want to see it, I want to meet them._

 _I_ and _want_ were rapidly becoming Visenna’s two least favorite words. Although _why_ was also a strong contender.

_Why do you spend so much time with your potions? Why do I need to think about making these flowers grow? Why do you want me to tame the foxes? They’re supposed to be wild, aren’t they?_

“Mama,” he asks, and she holds back a shudder at the word, at the reminder that she created this thing. “Why do I have to drink this?”

Her hand doesn’t waver as she holds the sleeping draught out to him.

“Because you need it to sleep,” she says.

“I don’t want to sleep,” he complains, face screwing up in a way that means tears are imminent. “I’m not tired, I want to go play knight!”

“I told you that you can’t play knight,” she says, putting the potion in his hand. “It isn’t right, killing things.”

“But I’m _not_ killing things, I’m saving the princess.”

“By killing the dragon.” Frustration boils in her. Why can’t he just _understand?_ Why must he protest every simple request?

He scowls down at the potion.

“I don’t wanna sleep.”

“Well, I want you to.”

He glares at her. And he might not have been able to feel hatred as a baby, but he certainly can now, and she can feel it directed at her.

_“No!”_

The potion smashes against the ground. He looks at her, defiant, furious, chest heaving. Destroying things, like he always does.

She has had enough.

“You don’t want to sleep?” she asks. “Fine then. Get your things. We’re going to market.”

***

She intends to sell him. Wash her hands of the whole mess and start over.

But then, halfway to the next town, she senses someone at the edge of her awareness. Soft footsteps and slow heartbeat, the sharp aberration of magic mutated into a blunt axe. A witcher.

And well, Aspen likes the thought of killing dragons and saving princesses, doesn’t he? Perhaps this will be good for him. Perhaps he will even like it, better than he ever liked her.

She pulls the cart to a halt and tells him to go fetch some water.

***

Geralt gives up the name Aspen as soon as he can. It’s just a reminder of all the things he can never be, someone gentle and soft and connected to nature. Someone stubborn and enduring, standing in the woods for centuries and never bending to another’s will. He’s to be a witcher, and witchers are made to be bent to the needs of the world. They are made to be strong and courageous and deadly. They are made to help.

The name is a reminder of his mother, her disappointment in him, her hands tipping sleeping draughts down his throat when he got to be too much, her frustration at his ceaseless questions, at his lack of magic, at his deficiency.

Shedding it feels like he’s shedding himself of her, too. Of the person she expected him to be. It feels like he’s being born anew.

***

His teachers often ask him about the druidic magic flowing through his blood. He thinks they want to see how powerful he would be, if he could combine witcher signs with nature magic. He tells them again and again that he has no power, that his mother’s gifts did not take root in him. That he’s useless.

“You’re not useless,” Vesemir says, sadness dancing in his eyes. “Am I a druid? Is Eskel? Are any of your fellows?”

“No.” Vesemir thankfully doesn’t comment on the small sound of his voice.

“Then why would we expect you to be?”

“I—you always ask, and—”

“We were asking because you’re one of the best trackers this keep has ever seen,” Vesemir says. “One of the best navigators. You walk through the woods like it’s your own home, like you know it just as well.”

“That’s not _magic,”_ Geralt insists, but he’s not sure, all of a sudden.

He thinks of the way the forest feels. Wild and unconstrained, not nearly as safe as the walls of Kaer Morhen. But also familiar. Comforting in its unpredictability, safe in its freeness. It refuses to be restrained, but it can be learned. Worked with, not against.

“Maybe not,” Vesemir agrees. “Either way, you have a talent, wolf. Doesn’t much matter how you came by it, right?”

“Right,” Geralt says, relief flooding him.

“We won’t ask about your ma again. I understand that it…it’s a difficult subject for most of the pups, here. I’m sorry that we ignored that.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. But I’ll do better.”

With that, Vesemir claps him on the back and tells him to hurry along to training.

***

The years pass. Strength gathers in Geralt’s limbs. The trials break him down and build him into something new, a dull set of silverware re-forged into a sword. Even after the trials, there is still more training to do, more skills to learn, before he can set out on the Path.

Between sword fighting and potion brewing, sign casting and survival training, he learns the forest more and more. Learns where the trees grow thickest, where the streams run, where the animals gather, and where they avoid. Where useful potion ingredients grow and how to harvest them so that they’ll grow back. How to trap and hunt and fish.

He ignores the way the trees reach for him as he passes. He has no magic beyond his signs. He is but a witcher, nothing more, nothing less.

***

Except he is not a full witcher, not yet. Not quite as strong and quick and deadly as someone like Vesemir.

And he is not the only person that has made these woods their hunting ground.

***

He wakes up in a familiar clearing with a splitting headache and a screaming leg. He doesn’t remember, for a moment, how he got here. But then it hits him like a sword to the gut. Five bandits, circling him. Jeers and laughter, _look at the little puppy, all alone._ A blow to the head that sent him to the ground, dazed and disoriented. Another blow that came down on his leg, shattering it so he couldn’t hope to run. A third blow, again to the head, and then nothing.

His arms are bound in front of him, criss-crossed with thin rope that he thinks he might be able to break. But as soon as he tries to yank his arms apart, laughter crescendos around him.

“Don’t bother, puppy,” one of the men laughs. “It’s enchanted to hold far stronger things than you.”

Footsteps strike the earth around him as the men grow closer, peering down at Geralt like he’s a particularly interesting insect. He tries to swallow down his panic, but his mind won’t stop reminding him that he often vanishes into the woods for a week or more, that no one will think to look for him for days. That he could be dead by then, or hurt beyond repair.

“What do you want?” he says, and it sounds less like the threat of a trained warrior, and more like the plea of a scared child.

More laughter. A hand in his hair, yanking it up and forcing him to face the leader.

“Your eyes,” he says conversationally. “To start. Then your fingernails, toenails, ears, hair. And then we can move on to the bigger things. Your liver, your kidneys. Your heart. You’ll be dead by then, lucky for you.”

Geralt shakes his head, kicking out with his one good leg and hitting only air. Fear blooms in his throat, pours down into his stomach, slips into each of his limbs until he’s shaking like an autumn leaf, about to fall.

About to die.

“No,” he chokes. “No, no—”

“Lots of magic in a witcher’s organs,” he says, snapping his fingers at the other bandits. Two of them step forward, grabbing Geralt by the shoulders and forcing him to the ground. He thrashes wildly, but he is dizzy and weak from the head injury, and they pin him easily. One of them presses a hand down on his forehead, holding his head still. _Your eyes to start, oh gods, oh gods._ “Lots of money.”

The leader kneels down next to him. There’s a knife gleaming in his hand, small and sharp.

“I always like to make the first cut,” he grins. Geralt can’t stop the sob that tears itself from his throat. He tries to flex his fingers into the shape for Aard, Quen, Axii, _anything_ to protect him, but the rope is wrapped too tightly around and between them.

This is it. He’s going to die before he even takes one step on the Path, carved up like an animal in the middle of the woods. Tears are brimming in his eyes and he looks up at the trees, swaying in the wind above him. And fucking hell, they’re aspen. The last thing he’ll ever see is the name he tried so hard to rid himself of.

The man places the knife against his cheek and Geralt braces himself for agony, for darkness.

And then—

_Let us help. Let us help you._

A whisper.

The forest whispers around him. The trees above, the undergrowth below, the animals lurking within the depths, the wildflowers crushed beneath Geralt’s weight. _Let us help you, friend._

_Please. Please help. Please don’t let them hurt me._

A scream fills the clearing. It’s not Geralt’s.

The leader scrabbles at his chest, at the branch that has slipped between his ribs. The other bandits stare at him in shock as the aspen tree bends back up, hoisting the man high in the air. More branches whip against him, _through_ him, splitting him into dozens of pieces. Just like he was planning to do to Geralt. Just like he had done to other young witchers before him.

Another bandit snatches up the fallen knife, slashing wildly towards Geralt’s throat, but the flowers reach up as one and curl around his hand, tugging him back towards the ground. He screams as he falls, and keeps screaming as the flowers wrap him in their roots and stems, lashing him to the earth like they’re trying to pull him through it.

And then they squeeze. And he stops screaming.

Geralt closes his eyes after that, curling into a ball as the screams echo around him, trying to calm his racing heart.

He has magic. He has magic. He has _fucking druid magic._ He nearly died, in the most awful way he could imagine, and the forest said _no._ The forest said _you won’t touch him._

It isn’t peaceful magic. It isn’t anything like how he remembered his mother's. Neat and calm and controlling. Made to tame animals and children alike, made to mold the world into something useful. Instead, it’s wild, and angry, and protective, rising up to crush those that would dare to harm another.

It’s what he wants to be.

What he is.

He keeps his eyes closed for a long while after the screaming stops, just breathing in the forest as it settles around him.

 _You’re alright,_ it says. A simple statement of the facts. It doesn’t try to calm him, doesn’t try to soothe away his fear. It lets him feel that fear, lets him acknowledge it, claim it, tuck it away inside his heart.

_Thank you._

He opens his eyes.

Between his still-bound hands, a daisy blooms. Gentle and beautiful, even after all the pain around him, all the fear inside him.

 _This is also who you are,_ the forest says. _Remember that._

Geralt smiles.

_I will._


End file.
